Why We’re Fans Of College Lacrosse & Our Teams

Welcome to the refreshed College Crosse! To celebrate the new look and feel of our sports communities, we’re sharing stories of how and why we became fans of our favorite teams. If you’d like to share your story, head over to the FanPosts to write your own post. Each FanPost will be entered into a drawing to win a $500 Fanatics gift card*. We’re collecting all of the stories here and featuring the best ones across our network as well. Come Fan With Us!

Why I’m A Fan Of College Lacrosse

I fell in love with lacrosse late, my freshman year in high school to be exact. I just started at a new school and didn’t know many people. Like many people at my school, I had a huge passion for sports, and I wasn’t the most athletic kid in my grade.

So instead of trying out for sports, I decided to become a manager, specifically trying out something new with lacrosse. I’ve only heard of lacrosse because of the Philadelphia Wings (RIP), and later found out that my assistant coach at La Salle College High School, Tony Resch, used to be their head coach and played at Yale. My head coach at La Salle, Bill Leahy, played at Loyola, so it was an experienced staff, with talented players that went through the school, such as Tucker Durkin, Niko Amato, and later on Casey Eidenshink and Matt Rambo, with plenty more talent coming through each year.

To learn more about the sport outside of high school and us dominating nearly every team in the state, I fell upon college lacrosse on ESPNU during the 2011 NCAA Tournament, and it started to become habitual during the spring to try and watch games on ESPNU with my dad, who also started to become a fan because of my involvement with La Salle.

Flash forward to my first day at Syracuse University, after being a part of a state championship team in 2013 and multiple Philadelphia Catholic League title winners as well. I got to Manley Field House to see if I could be an equipment manager for the Orange, and I eventually got to talk to Roy Simmons III, the team’s Director of Operations and the one who decides to bring in managers. There were already two upperclassmen managers there, but their video guy could not find a permanent job with the school, so I was asked if I could do video. I told him I did plenty of it, and showed him and John Desko some of the games I filmed at La Salle and liked it.

The spring of that year, Marisa Ingemi, who you’ll hear from when I’m done, came onto my LinkedIn page and asked if I wanted to write for her site, In Lacrosse We Trust. I did a few posts a week, and also went to my first Championship Weekend in Philadelphia. Last year, I started to write about the Philly teams for this site, and started to do my pregame shows on Periscope for ILWT and College Crosse before each Cuse game.

I’ve barely watched any pro lacrosse (MLL or NLL) for the past few years, but I think that I might grow into a fan in the future, once more guys I’ve followed in college begin to go pro. But college lacrosse was my stepping stone into what I do today. Similar to hockey, college lacrosse is a sport filled with action (for the most part, if you’re not playing Bryant). Not a ton of people know the sport or have seen a full game on TV or in person, but once you do, you start to see why it’s one of the fastest growing sports in the world.

Lacrosse Twitter clashes with each other nearly every week on many topics, mainly about growing the game. I hope the game grows, especially in college, because that would mean more eyes on the sport during the season, and hopefully a domino effect for the high school level, NLL, and MLL.

I’m not going to write about why I’m a fan of Syracuse lacrosse, because I pretty much wrote that on Monday.

-Chris Jastrzembski

Why I’m A Fan Of Boston University Lacrosse

I’ve been a lacrosse fan since I was 13 years old, but it was not my first sport. I was a baseball and a hockey fan before I even knew what lacrosse was. I got hooked on the sport from seeing a Calgary Roughnecks - Orlando Titans game on TV while I was in Bradenton, Florida, and a team called the Boston Blazers happened to have a playoff game in Orlando the next week. I bought a Blazers jersey, and an official from the team literally spotted me and came to my seat to thank me for going.

I didn’t know a single thing about lacrosse yet, but already a fan of obscure baseball and hockey teams and leagues, it already had become my favorite thing ever.

I followed almost exclusively pro lacrosse, with the Blazers/Cannons/Black Wolves/Rock Hoppers before I started really following the college side, and I remember the first time I was really intrigued by college lacrosse was when I heard Boston University was getting a team. By that point, it was already my dream school, and I was hyped I could maybe go to a Division I lacrosse school.

By the third year of the program, I was going to BU, and the only thing I wanted, and the only thing I talked about to everyone I met there, was how much I wanted to cover the lacrosse team. I figured it was probably annoying, but the team, BU Athletics, and student media welcomed me with open arms.

My first semester at BU as a part of student media was somewhat... hectic, to say the least. What grounded me to stay involved was I knew I’d have a chance to cover BU lacrosse. I wasn’t sure about anything else, but I knew I was going to do everything I could to be as involved as possible with the team that represented where I chose to go to school.

The first game I was at, I got to do color commentary. It was the third game I had ever broadcasted in my life, but BU gave me a shot. Then they let me keep doing it, and by the end of my time there, I got to do play by play for their final two games, including a playoff game. I don’t think anyone knew/knows how much it meant to me to get to be the voice of my favorite team for a little while.

Why is BU lacrosse my favorite team I’ve ever covered? I’ve covered the Cannons, Bruins, Red Sox, Celtics, and about a hundred other various teams, college, pro, and high school. But BU lacrosse is what I will most fondly remember.

The reason I love lacrosse and will always be involved with it, even as I continue to expand with a career in pro hockey, is because it’s always a place I’ve felt welcomed, respected, wanted, and where I belonged. The same was the case at BU. I went into BU having never been on my own, and there was a lot going on that was overwhelming, at college and away.

But at Nickerson Field is where I felt completely like where I belonged, and like I was doing something that mattered, and that my work with significant and people cared about it.

No matter where I go, in lacrosse and elsewhere, BU lacrosse will always be one of the best experiences I ever had.

-Marisa Ingemi

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